


you haunt me

by niniadepapa



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niniadepapa/pseuds/niniadepapa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Okay, Emma. You presented with lateral ST elevations and reciprocal inferior changes consistent with an MI.”<br/>Graham felt three pair of eyes staring at him, and he rushed to translate.<br/>“Basically a heart attack.”</p><p>(or that time emma suffered from a broken heart) (based on a case from grey's anatomy)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you haunt me

“Humbert, there’s a cardio patient waiting for you.” Dr. Whale’s booming voice reverberated against the hospital’s walls as he called rounds, and Graham’s eyes lit up. 

“I’m in cardio?” he stuttered. 

Whale gave him a bored look over his chart. “Did I stutter? Go!”

“Already gone, sir!” he called over his shoulder, picking up the case’s chart and practically flying down the stairs, his mind already conjuring every possible scenario of what he’d find. Maybe he’d get to scrub in, even though Dr. Cora Mills wasn’t exactly the teaching interns type. Whale was good enough, but his friend Ruby was working with him that day. He daydreamed as he made his way down another set of stairs: maybe it would require an exciting procedure, like the one where they literally froze a patient until he was dead - like dead, _dead_ \- so they could operate on him and then warmed him back to life. Graham got to watch it with his mates from the gallery, green with envy as he inspected Belle stand by the operating table, almost shaking in her excitement. Not that he could blame her: it had been _amazing_. Or maybe there would be a chance for him to actually _touch a human heart_. 

How weird was his job, that he had such morbid thoughts and he felt giddy about it? 

All his dreams of grandeur and out-of-league scenarios flew from his mind when he entered the room and took in his new patient. She laid half-reclined in her bed, seemingly annoyed with the standard blue robe the patients were given as soon as they were admitted into the hospital. Sitting by her bed and smiling brightly at her was a young boy with a mop of brown hair and hazel eyes, and on the other side stood a blond, broad-shouldered man, passing a hand worriedly over his hair.  

“You shouldn’t have walked Nana in the rain,” he was saying, and his patient - Emma Swan, or so his chart said - rolled her eyes. 

“Dad, for the last time, it wasn’t the _rain_ , I just passed out, okay?”

The man put his hands on his hips, glaring at her. “Yeah, that makes me feel so much better.”

“You almost had an aneurysm the time a perp kicked me in the ribs before running away, forgive me if I don’t take your fussing too seriously.”

Before her dad could cut in again, Graham smoothed over his lab coat and cleared his throat, attempting to look as professional as he could manage.“Actually, Mrs Swan…”

“Miss Swan. It’s Miss Swan. Emma. Whatever.” The patient’s cheeks flushed as she waved a hand in protest, and Graham himself blushed, furiously scribbling with his pen the proper way of addressing her on his chart. He gave her an apologetic smile, silently asking for forgiveness, and went on, studying the analysis he had been given. 

“Okay, Emma. You presented with lateral ST elevations and reciprocal inferior changes consistent with an MI.”

He felt three pair of eyes staring at him, and he rushed to translate. 

“Basically a heart attack.”

Miss Swan’s father’s hands went to his head, already muttering under his breath. But it was the boy’s reaction that got Graham’s heart contracting in his chest, feeling for him. The boy’s hand gripped Miss Swan’s, face paling in the unflattering lights of the hospital room. “Oh my God.”

To Graham’s surprise, the patient herself seemed to be the calmest of their petit comité. She shushed the boy - her son, Graham guessed - and cupped his chin with her hand. “Hey, hey, kid, don’t worry, okay? I’ve had chest pains before and it’s all been good. I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s nothing,” she repeated firmly, glaring daggers at Graham as if daring him to contradict her. 

Graham promised to come back as soon as he had the rest of her labs to give her his diagnosis. He hoped he could give her good news. He wasn’t really looking forward to his patient biting his head off. 

(Nor did he want to give any kind of bad news to the family he had just met.)

 

* * *

 

He caught up with Dr. Whale as he studied the OR board with a frown. Graham noticed there were blank spots and he himself scowled - blank spaces were never good. Superstition in the hospital said it meant bad news. “Hey, I got Emma Swan’s tests back. It’s weird though. I don’t think she had a heart attack.” 

Whale shook himself away from the blanks and picked the labs from him, studying them with curiosity. “Yeah well, look at the changes in her EKG. She _had_ something,” he said, pointing at the page, and Graham sighed. 

“Her serial enzymes and dobutamine stress echo were negative.” He shrugged. “I actually think she’s fine.”

He must have let the eagerness he felt to close the case show on his voice, because Whale shot him a glare. It wasn’t like Graham was blowingit off; more like he thought there wasn’t any more to it, and he could, you know, learn and actually find a chance to hold a scalpel for the first time in another case a little more interesting. “Sure, and if rookie scruffy guy here says she’s fine then she’s fine, huh?”

“Eh…”

Dr. Whale shoved the labs back at him, switching his focus back to the pager beeping in his pocket. Spinning on his heel to go back to his own case, he called back at Graham over his shoulder. “Get a cardiac cath. Be thorough.”

Graham was left standing on the spot, scratching his head and looking down unhappily at the results on his hands. “I _am_ thorough,” he grumbled, and sighed before going back to visit his patient and tell her they needed to do some more tests.

 

Great. 

* * *

 

“Cardio tells me your cath went just fine,” he told Miss Swan, and her eyebrows rose up her forehead. 

“Is the bruise this size fine, though?” 

He smiled apologetically. “Your wound looks good, don’t worry about that. So do the results on your cath. You have no blockages on your arteries.”

Her father - whose name he had previously learned was David after she had told him to _please shut up and let the doctor talk_ , - anxiously looked up at him from his chair. “...in English, that means...?”

“You did not have a heart attack,” he declared, and there was a shared breath of relief by the occupants of the room, Emma included. 

“Does that mean I can get out of this thing now and go home?” she asked, lips curling down in a pout. 

“Not yet,” Graham said, and at her scowl he put up his hands in apology. “I’m sorry, but your EKG shows significant changes and I’m going to find out before you leave the hospital.”

Whale had asked him to be thorough, right? Well, then he damn well was gonna be thorough and find out what the hell was wrong with the blond patient who he hadn’t seen smile since he had first seen her. 

“Great,” she grumbled, and her son patted her hand soothingly. 

“Hey mom, don’t worry. We have gummy bears,” he said grinning, holding up a package of said candy in his free hand.

Emma’s lips curled in the tiniest smile Graham had ever seen. “Yay,” she sing-songed, and Graham hid his own smile behind her chart. 

 

* * *

He ran back to the nurses station and approached Ariel, the most cheerful one he had met since he started as an intern and definitely one of his favorite people in the hospital. “Can you get me copies of all Emma Swan’s records and page me?”

“Is it urgent?” she asked, grinning as always. Graham smiled back.

“I’ll bring you your favorite tuna sandwich if you do it.”

She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t eat fish.”

“I know. I was just teasing you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ass.”

 

* * *

 

Graham read the records over once more, fingers nervously fiddling with his pen as he stood before Emma and her family. “Miss Swan, do you realize that you’ve been admitted to the hospital on this date for the past four years?”

A brief flash of panic passed over her face, but she schooled her expression astoundingly fast. 

David appeared completely taken aback. “That can’t be.”

“I don’t remember the date exactly…” Emma started, gaze fleeting between Graham and the door, as if she were looking for the closest exits to get the hell away from there. Not that she’d get very far without security blocking her passage, but Graham was wiser than to bet against this woman. He held the papers in his hand, showing them to her. 

“I have the medical records…” He pointed to the date on the first record, the first day of May, which showed up three more times in the following pages, and Emma’s eyes widened in barely-concealed horror. “On this date for the past four years you have what looks like a heart attack.”

She shook her head, blond curls sticking to the side of her face after laying on it on her pillow for the past hour. “No, no. I know I’ve had some scares but…”

“Every year on this date?” Henry sounded both curious and fearful, and Graham looked him over, but the boy’s tone was sufficiently clueless that he realized whatever it was that Emma knew, her boy definitely did not. 

“Is there significance to this date for you?” he asked Emma. Shaking her head slowly, she shrugged, looking unfazed even though Graham had noticed her distress.  

“No. nothing.”

He frowned. “What were you doing the first time you had a cardiac episode?”

Emma’s lips thinned, and she rose an eyebrow challengingly at him. “You really think I know what I was doing four years from now? Give me a rest.”

To Graham’s surprise - and Emma’s distress - Henry snapped his fingers, making a triumphant sound under his throat. “We were in the yard. It was a Sunday, and we were having family lunch together as always. I remember because Killian...” Emma’s jaw tightened at the name, Graham noted, “...the Irish guy who lived next door, remember? Well, he moved out that day. We watched as the moving truck took his stuff away and you had your first attack.”

Graham dubiously flitted his gaze between mother and son. “And you were close to Killian?” 

Emma didn’t even move a muscle, staring him down. “No. We barely knew him,” she declared detachedly. 

_Bullshit_ , Graham wanted to add, but refrained himself as David shook his head as if to clear it and asked wonderingly, “That’s all very good and all but what does it have to do with Emma’s heart?”

Graham gaped at him, wondering if the guy was joking, but then stared back at Emma. Taking her closed-off expression and rigid stance in, holding herself as if she was going to break any moment, he got his answer as to why her family seemed to be completely clueless.

Some things were better to keep to one self, even if it broke you from the inside. Sometimes literally, as it seemed to be in Emma’s case, who seemed to be suffering from a broken heart. 

 

* * *

 

Some time later, when he saw David and Henry go down to the cafeteria - not without warning them about the awful salad they should avoid - he knocked on her door, and let himself in. He sat on the chair Henry had previously been in, and Emma gave him a tired look. “You have stress cardiomyopathy,” he said. 

For the first time, he saw raw panic cross Emma’s features. “Cardiomyopathy?” Graham nodded, and she pressed on, voice shaking. “What the hell is that?”

Graham breathed out slowly through his mouth. “It’s Killian.”

She met his eyes, her earlier panic morphing into confusion. “Killian?”

“Killian, yeah. He wasn’t just the guy next door, am I right?” he asked, and Emma practically growled at him, hands curling into fists over the pale blue sheets of her bed. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re _way_ out of line.” 

Graham leaned further on the uncomfortable hospital chair, almost knocking the pack of cards Henry had left on the armrest. He brought her chart to his knees, evenly reciting as softly as he could her annual symptoms. “Every year, on the day he moved out, you get a rush of adrenaline caused by stress. Your pressure rises, you have chest pains, and you end up here.” He looked up from the chart and found her with her eyes closed as her hand came up to wipe away a stray tear falling down her cheek. “Miss Swan…”

“Emma,” she stopped him, sniffing. “Please, if we’re gonna talk about _this_ , then call me Emma.”

Graham’s heart broke for her, and found his flawless professionalism and bedside manners shake as his hand urged to take hers in his. “Okay. Emma. I’m here to help you, if you let me. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable or hurt you. My job is to ease your pain, and for that I need you to be honest with me.”

Emma eyed him, biting her lip dubiously, making her look way younger than she was, softer round the edges. “Patient’s confidentiality?”

He put a hand over his chest, nodding gravely. “Scout’s honor.”

She chuckled at his attempt at a joke, and with a sigh, leaned further on her pillow. She let her gaze wander at some lost point over his shoulder, out the window, and her voice lowered, almost a whisper as she told him her story. “I moved here right before Henry was born, eleven years ago, after a messed up relationship went wrong. Killian moved next door when Henry was three.”  

Graham nodded, urging her on silently. 

“For eight years, I loved him, and he loved me.” She stopped with a soft hiccup, and took the tissue he offered her with a grateful look, and wiped her eyes. “This is gonna sound super cheesy, but he was my _person_. My soulmate.” 

He was almost afraid to ask, but found the will to finally do it. “What happened?”

Emma closed her eyes shut, shoulders dropping with a drawn-out sigh. “He was married.”

Graham could barely hide his surprise. “So you were never together?”

She smiled tearfully. “No.”

“But you loved each other.”

“Yeah.”

Graham kept trying to piece together the bits and pieces of information in his head, frowning. “And he moved out?”

“He told me he wanted me. That he was ready to do whatever it was to be with me. And I...” She inhaled sharply, as if the simple action of saying the words aloud pained her. “I chickened out. Told him that for me it was enough for him to just _be_ there, even if nothing really happened. He said that he couldn’t do it anymore.” She paused, looking at her bitten nails as she fidgeted with the hem of the sheet, almost talking to herself. “I was afraid of things changing. I just... I was afraid.”

Graham looked at her. “It’s grief. Your heart stops because it’s grieving for Killian.”

The fresh wave of tears blurring her eyes made the green look like the sea, and Graham thought he’d drown in her heartbreak. “So what do I do next? I mean, how do I treat it?” she asked, albeit desperately. Graham looked down at his notes and charts, medical facts, lab reports and scientific terms, and thought back on the number of years he had studied to be a doctor and, as he had told Emma, ease her patients’ pain. 

He thought of how he couldn’t do a thing about this. 

“I wish I knew,” he told her, and professionalism be damned, he took her hand, rubbing his thumb over her fingers as her shoulders shook with a new sob.

 

* * *

 

She asked him not to tell her father or Henry, and Graham complied. He discharged her, signing the papers with a quick flourish, and joined her at the hospital doors before she left with her family. Their eyes met for the last time, and then she was gone, her heart still broken and Graham’s uneasy. 

 

* * *

 

A year later, she was back. This time, she had fallen down and hit her head, and managed to spin a tale for Henry about her slipping on the wet ground instead of her usual quasi-heart attack. Graham gave her a look, but she stayed tight-lipped and looking as exhausted as any overworked intern at the hospital. 

“Have you considered... you know,” he started as he sutured the cut on her forehead. She eyed him curiously, the corner of her lip curling up at his indecision.

“No, I don’t know. You’re being pretty cryptic, doc.”

He rolled his eyes. “You know... Dating?” he finally fumbled, and her lips now definitely stretched into a wide grin.

“Are you asking me out?”

Thankfully he had finished with the thread closing her cut, as his hand shook with suppressed surprise. “What? No!” At her pursed lips, he rubbed his temples tiredly, hiding a grimace at his own stupidity. “Not that you aren’t a lovely woman, but that’s not what I meant.”

She cocked her head to the side, studying him silently. “I have dated these past five years, if that’s what you’re asking.”

There was a pause, and he considered her words. He heard the implied ‘I have tried but no matter what I can’t move on.’. “But you still end up here,” he finished for her, and she nodded matter-of-factly.

“Yeah.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

As he ripped open a packet holding the sterilized bandage, he kept playing questions in his mind. The woman laying on the bed next to him and her story had left quite the impression on him, and sometimes he found himself thinking about her, about how she was holding up, about her Killian. Somehow, he found in himself the courage to ask another question. “Have you thought about...”

“Look, doc, I know you’re trying to help but this is getting ridiculous. I don’t need a ‘Date my patient’ reality show or whatever,”  she deadpanned, catching him off guard. He discerned a hint of impatience in the tone of her voice, as if she was tired of the conversation already.

“Aren’t you a bailbonds person?”

Sour sarcasm laced her tone. “...So?”

“Can’t you find him? Killian?”

“No.”

“But...”

“Is that all?”  she asked him through gritted teeth.

“I guess.”  he said, irritated by the eyebrow she raised in return - and irritated by his inability to get through her so he could do his damn job and _help_ her. “Just - think about it. I’d rather not find you here next year,”  he added, the easygoing smile he had attempted to send her with his joke transforming into something akin to compassion. 

She was the one to break the silence this time, touching her now bandaged forehead and wincing slightly. A frown touched her lips. “I’m not making any promises.”

* * *

 

 

He watched her go as unsettled as he had been the year before, taking in her arm looped around Henry’s shoulders as she hugged to her side and the way she ducked her head under the soft drizzle. He didn’t have much time to mull over his dilemma as he stared aimlessly at their retreating form, though, as Dr. Fa called his name and barked something about a lab report he had to get to track down _right now_. 

He missed Henry’s glance over his shoulder before they disappeared inside a cab.

 

* * *

 

(A year later, he realized that Emma should have counted on Henry being an eavesdropping little shit and taking matters into his own hands.)

 

* * *

May 1st came and went, but Graham was so busy with sleepless nights, studying to stay top of their year (he and Ruby were the most competitive residents to ever wander those hospital halls, he swore to God) that he didn’t have time to think about the whereabouts of the brokenhearted blonde girl. 

 

* * *

 

Six weeks later, though, he was reminded of her. Or more like he _ran_ straight into her like a train as she sat on one of the beds in trauma, scowling fiercely at Ruby as she examined her bruised side. 

“Emma?” he sputtered before he had time to ponder about it, and Ruby’s head tilted up, looking from him to the patient. 

“You know each other?”

Graham scratched the back on his neck, flushing. “Yeah, she’s a...”

“A friend?”

“An old patient,” he surmised, ignoring Emma’s smirk behind his coworker. He tapped Ruby on the shoulder. “I got this, Lucas, go get another case.”

Ruby frowned. “But...”

“Please,” he begged, and Ruby sighed, nodding at Emma in farewell and scowling at him as she fled in search of something else to do. He didn’t think she’d have any problem, there had been an accident at the driveway and there were a handful of patients around waiting for them. He took Ruby’s place, taking a new pair of gloves from the box nearby and putting them on. 

“So. You’re back.”

Emma smiled. “I guess.” He smiled back, and then something occurred to him: It was the first time he saw her smiling at him. No effort needed, just for the hell of it. 

It suited her. 

“You look... different,” he commented, and helped her move slightly so he could inspect the bruising on the side of her chest. He gingerly touched under her ribs, and she hissed softly under her breath. “Fell again?”

She shrugged, as if it was no big deal. “I tripped for real on someone’s shoes and hurt my already sore ribs. I would have stayed home but they insisted that I come for a checkup just in case.”

He rolled his eyes, already dreading the moment her father would show up and putting on another drama show as two years prior. Henry though, he could manage. “Right.” He went to take her chart to write down the labs he wanted to run to find out if her ribs were cracked, and his eyes unconsciously found the date.

It wasn’t May 1st.

 “Wait...” he started, and then someone strode up to Emma’s side. 

“Swan? Is everything okay?”

Graham studied his face a little longer than he initially expected he would, from the darkness of his hair to the sharpness of his features. The newcomer’s expression was concerned as he reached Emma’s bed, and his hand automatically went to hers, lacing their fingers together. His eyes, a vibrant blue, locked on Graham, and he expectantly looked between him and Emma waiting for an answer. Emma hid a smile, patting his hand reassuringly. 

“Yeah. Dr. Humbert, this is Killian.”

Graham let out a soft gasp of surprise that he attempted to mask with a cough, as Killian explained how he had been away for some years back in London, had gone through an ugly divorce, and how a young lad had somehow tracked him down and he had felt the need to come back. Graham, still half-dazed, kept exchanging bemused glances with Emma. 

“Nice to meet you, mate,” Killian finally said, holding his hand out and shaking his, and Graham could see the surprised tilt of his brows when he gripped it a bit too enthusiastically, still staring in wonder at Emma’s amused grin behind him. 

“Yeah, nice to meet you too.”

Killian pulled back and went to sit by Emma until their arms touched and he could brush his finger over her shoulder, as if he couldn’t bear to stay an inch away from her. “Is something wrong with her? Dr. Lucas said it was probably just a bruise.”

Graham shook his head, trying to clear his head as he read over her chart just in case there was something else he had missed. _Be thorough_ , Whale’s voice echoed in his head, and he couldn’t help the tug at his lips at the memory of that fateful day- the same day he met the woman sitting in front of him. “We’ll do some checkups but I’m sure she’s fine. She’s more than okay.” He turned to look intently at her. “Do you feel okay?”

  
She nodded. “Yeah, I feel great.”

“No more chest pains?” he asked, and she shook her head, and practically _beamed_ up at him even if she tried to restrain herself. Not that Graham minded: as he had said, it was a great look on her, nothing compared to what he had witnessed the two previous times he had met her. 

“Not anymore,” she declared, eyes glinting as she eyed Killian, who kept fussing over her as if he couldn’t help it. 

“Good,” Graham said, and for once, meant it when it came to his patient, who he had diagnosed once with Broken Heart Syndrome. He fervently hoped that she’d be alright now that her heart was in good hands.

 

 


End file.
